HR: Human Remains Review – Signing A Contract For Office Hell

Well, HR: Human Remains was a minor inconvenience to begin with. As per my workflow, I aim to play as many Steam games as I can through one of my handhelds, with the flavour of the month being the Retroid Nova. It loads great, but there are no controller or touchscreen options, just a language selection.

That doesn’t get an immediate star withdrawal. After all, this is published by Black Lantern Collective, and they are fast becoming one of my favourites, with Sucker For Love: Crush Landing, Fright Train and Dead Finger Dice. And, by the time I did set it up to play (Laptop > Artemis > AYN Thor with mouse and keyboard through the telly!), I remembered the kind of games they back.

dennisCorner’s game starts with a contract, and how would one sign that? With a knife. Across your wrist. That’s the first interaction you have in HR: Human Remains, so if we switch to Peppa Pig and candyfloss, I would genuinely be shocked. Unlike that nasty opener. Literally.

Sign On The Bloody Line

So what have I just signed up for? I get allocated a workspace and an objective pops up to stop bleeding. That would explain the red vignette. In continuation of the early UX issue, I then noticed how tiny the cursor was and didn’t realise what I could interact with. Not much.

After meeting a cleaner, who shares the same ‘look’ as all the other demons in HR: Human Remains, they point me in the direction of a medikit (stuffing my hand in an ominous hole like in Hellraiser: Revival), then I decide to explore.

In my first playthrough, I decided I wasn’t going to explore unless something presented itself as key to my progress, so I wandered through the chunky pixels and claret, occasionally tuning into the ominous music. I’m expecting something, and that something is primarily puzzles.

Unlike most first-person puzzle games, HR: Human Remains does feature an interconnecting story, with a very lived-in world. That’s an understatement, as the entire office building is being consumed by this visceral matter, and demons are wandering around left, right, and centre.

The Walls Have Ears, Eyes, Mouths and Horns

There’s a disconnect, though. As pointed out, a cleaner helped me out with my leaking wound, and throughout there are demons who are quite inquisitive, and others that are a pixelated version of Shelob. Then again, the latter did forewarn me about my actions to begin with.

Apparently, there are more primal demons that want to harm you, and the, ahem, elite demons feel compelled to protect you from them with their own nefarious ways. In fact, I overlooked that having been assigned a job at the beginning gave me a hall pass that prevented me from being devoured.

From the visuals alone, it would make sense for this, a first-person, chunky pixelated hell populated by office demons, to be an FPS, and I was expecting a bit of that, but glad it wasn’t. Though some of the puzzles, as subjective as this may be, were a bit unusual, as a lot of the seemingly inanimate objects are, in fact, alive.

Water Cooler Chitter Chatter

There’s no spoken dialogue in the game, and though the dialogue is presented in a staggered manner, it isn’t too disruptive. The key thing is the ambience and how unsettling HR: Human Remains feels. It doesn’t quite hit the shock value of the earlier wrist slicing, yet there’s something uncanny in how this all feels so… relatable.

I’m sure you have your own experiences that you can compare – perhaps not a reservation camp, but at least some anecdotes about being a slave at work or merging in with the furniture and being treated like a number. However, I think I’d prefer a dressing down from HR rather than surgical punishments.

You might recall I mentioned this being a first playthrough. I wrote that an hour in. What I didn’t know then was how much bigger the game is. I had anticipated a 60-minute experience like the recent My Little Hell, but HR: Human Remains is more expansive, in that you can escape those four walls for some flesh air.

Should you sign your life away? I’d recommend playing the demo first; check the terms and conditions.